ou going?'

'To London. You spoke to a publisher about my lectures on history;
they will serve for introduction. He may make me his hack--a willing
one, while I advertise--apply for anything. I must be gone!'

'You do not look fit for a night journey. You would be too early at
Estminster to see Isabel.'

'Don't name her!' cried James, starting round as if the word were a
dart. 'Thank Heaven that she is away! I must write to her. Maybe,
Lady Conway will keep her till I am settled--till I have found some
lodging in London where no one will know us.'

'And where you may run up a comfortable doctor's bill.'

With a gesture--half passion, half despair--James reiterated, 'There's
no staying here. I must be gone. I must be among strangers.'

'Your mens conscia would better prove that it has no cause for shame by
staying here, instead of rushing out of sight into the human
wilderness, and sacrificing those poor little--'

James struck his foot on the floor, as though to intercept the word;
but Louis continued, apparently unmoved by his anger--'Those poor
little children. If misfortune and injury be no disgrace to the
injured, I call it cowardly pride to fly off by night to hide oneself,
instead of living in your own house, like an honest man.'

'Live!--pray what am I to live on?' cried James, laughing hoarsely.

'You will not find out by whirling to London in your present state.'

In fact, Louis's most immediate care was to detain him for that one
night. There was a look of coming illness about him, and his
desperate, maddened state of mind might obscure his judgment, and urge
him into some precipitate measure, such as he might afterwards rue
bitterly for the sake of the wife and children, the bare thought of
whom seemed at present to sting him so intolerably. Moreover, Louis
had a vague hope that so harsh a proceeding would be abandoned by the
trustees; his father would remonstrate, and James might be able to
think and to apologize. He was hardly a rational being to-night, and
probably would have driven away any other companion; but long habit,
and external coolness, enabled Louis to stand his ground, and to
protract matters till the clock, striking eleven, relieved him, as much
as it exasperated James, by proving it so late that the last train
would have already past.

He persisted in declaring that he should go by the first in the
morning, and Louis persuaded him to go to bed, after Charlotte had
br